Opening as it does with the "hollow, juicy sound" of two women plastering a
wall with posters reading A WOMAN NEEDS A MAN LIKE A FISH NEEDS A BICYCLE
(remember those?), Fay Weldon's new novel would seem to pose more subtly the
question Time recently shouted from its cover. But in this case, the
issue is not the death (real or imagined) of feminism; instead, Weldon is
interested in the personal, sexual, and economic politics of the time in which
it was born.

The story centers on Medusa, a feminist publishing house founded in London in
1971 by a group of women who include firebrand Layla, sexy but uptight
Stephanie, gnomic guru Alice, and levelheaded Nancy. It is in the scene of
Medusa's conception that Weldon really nails the 1970s -- that era of rampant idealism mixed with
equally fervent self-centeredness. The women have gathered at the house
Stephanie shares with her antiques-dealer husband, Hamish; as they talk, drink,
and eventually disrobe and dance about, Hamish is in the kitchen feeling up the
group's weak sister, Daffy. Here is one '70s paradox Weldon wants us to
remember: if it was an age of ever-growing freedom and power for women, it was
also the beginning of an epidemic of divorce and stress. As Stephanie, walking
in on Hamish and Daffy, says: "This is last-straw time."

And yet the book never blames men -- or women -- for the trouble that sex gets
them into. In Big Girls Don't Cry, Weldon writes as a seasoned
campaigner, too experienced for romanticism yet too mature for bitterness.
Above all, she suggests, people of both sexes are flawed as individuals, not as
types: "It is hard for any of us to get beyond our sample of one." Which does
not mean that Weldon eschews generalization. On the contrary, the book abounds
with such wry -- yet sometimes heartbreaking -- examples as her musings on the
poster's proposition:

Women in their twenties thought they could do without men altogether, if
only it wasn't for sex. In their thirties they thought they could do without
men if it wasn't that they needed fathers for their children. In their forties
and thereafter they knew they could do without men perfectly well, if it wasn't
for companionship and someone to go out with, and someone around so you didn't
have to sleep forever in an empty bed. . . . And as so often
what you said you didn't want was what you wanted most, and what you had didn't
matter, and what you didn't have mattered most.

But for the most part, these women do elect to do without men, at least for
the time being. Stephanie leaves her philandering mate; Nancy, having dumped
her ludicrously strait-laced fiancé, moves in with Alice and her
eccentric parents; and Medusa becomes a sensation, shaking up the literary
scene with reprinted women's "classics" and new manifestos for the revolution
that never quite comes. Meanwhile, Zoe -- a fringe member of the group who has
elected to stay with her controlling, heavy-drinking husband (appropriately
named Bull) -- labors in secret to finish a book that recalls The
Feminine Mystique. But after she sends a chapter to Medusa, Bull burns the rest;
his deed sets in motion a tragedy that flowers into malevolence in the person
of Zoe's daughter, Saffron, who emerges as a postfeminist yuppie more concerned
with hostile takeovers than with sisterhood.

Weldon fills out her story with strong -- and often hilarious -- supporting
characters, including the surprisingly generous and resilient Daffy, the
charming cad Hamish, and the leaden, haunted Bull. As they age, Weldon hints at their growth (Hamish, once the antiques-world version of Warren
Beatty in Shampoo, matures into a cranky grandfather) but rarely encourages identification with their psyches. Hers is a
light, dry touch; Weldon's characters reveal themselves in their choice of
clothing, wine, and words, but we never overhear their thoughts.

None of which really matters, since the real fun here is in Weldon's detached,
almost Martian perspective on familiar events. Big Girls Don't Cry is a
cockeyed newsreel of the last quarter-century, reminding us that as the women's
movement dawned, "the human right to veracity and authenticity in personal
experience was not yet established. To be 'happy' was no one's quest, simply to
get by was enough." Weldon is sometimes too arch, and her efforts to touch all
the bases can feel forced (two gay characters, one of whom dies of AIDS, add
next to nothing to the story). Mostly, though, her dispassionate tone provides
a fertile environment for both sharp-edged social satire and wistful
near-optimism.

Big Girls Don't Cry covers some familiar territory: love, sex,
marriage, childhood, aging, betrayal, inequality, anger, disappointment,
revenge. What's new is that a book so cold and clinical on its surface can
reveal such unexpected generosity and compassion. Even more surprising,
perhaps, is her verdict on the feminist experiment she critiques. ("The
brighter the idea," Weldon quips in the Wildean tradition, "the worse the
consequences.") In the end, she writes, Layla, Stephanie, Alice, and Nancy were
"four women who changed the world, because it seemed simpler than changing
themselves. Big women, not little women, that was the point, and still
flourishing." Big women -- hear that, Ally McBeal?